Several
Wikipedia articles have linked to my website over the years, and I have contributed
myself a few times. I found Wikipedia to often be a good source of information,
but I also noticed a disturbing bias that mirrored the Euro-Anglo-American-centric
bias that has dogged the West for centuries. In late 2007, I read a Wikipedia
article that referred to a list of massacres.
I studied that subject matter for many years, and was immediately stuck by the
list’s overwhelming bias. History’s greatest
genocide was what the Spanish invasions inflicted on the Western Hemisphere’s
natives during the 16th century. That
genocide was punctuated early and often by massive slaughters, usually as a way
of establishing political control. In that list, there was not one mention
of any of those slaughters. In addition, the English version of Wikipedia is
obviously dominated by Americans (with the British also well represented), and
when the Indian genocide began happening on what became American soil, the massacre
list’s bias was even more evident. The Spanish initiated the mass slaughters
of Indians in North America, beginning with Hernando de Soto in 1539, but they continued unabated
(with the English, Dutch, French and Americans also inflicting large-scale massacres)
until the Wounded Knee massacre in 1890. About two massacres of Indians by Americans
made that massacre list, while more than a dozen Indian-inflicted massacres were
on that list, with “massacres” of as few as three white people making that list.
The list also had very little documentary support.

A
few weeks after I came upon that massacre list, I mentioned my dismay to a friend
and he suggested a little experiment: I would produce a list of omitted massacres,
and he would use his technical skills to add them to that list.

It
was easy to quickly assemble a list of massacres that were far larger and more
historically significant than three “pioneers” being murdered by some angry Indians
in the Wild West. I had already documented most of those slaughters that we added
on my website. I also provided sources for our massacre list additions. The
documentary support was very sparse on that list before we made our additions,
and any “editing” of our entries on the grounds that they were not documented
would be invalid, not when they were the only consistently-documented additions
to that list.

In
addition, many massacres on that list were wartime slaughters, particularly World
War II slaughters such as the Katyn massacre, perpetrated by the Soviets. American
slaughters of civilians during World War II were conspicuously absent. While
my friend and others were adding the allied firebombing of Dresden and the American
firebombing of Tokyo, I decided to contribute the “Grand
Finale” bombing of Japan, made while the Japanese were surrendering. I have
also reproduced the text from the official Air Force history, describing that
Grand Finale, below. As Japanese peace activist Makoto
Oda later related, accompanying the bombs dropped during the Grand Finale
were leaflets that announced Japan's surrender.

Click
on image to enlarge

As we suspected would
happen, people immediately began editing our contributions. While some edits
were understandable, they were obviously made by white people who began framing
the European/American massacres of Indians as somehow justified, or that the person
in charge of the slaughters disobeyed orders to do so (which was a strained interpretation
of the events), to provide “context.” Then the jingoists charged into the fray,
deleting entire entries, stridently claiming “bias,” that the massacres somehow
lacked proper documentation, and so forth (not all of those kinds of attacks were
directed at our entries specifically, but that was the trend of comments and general
atmosphere under which the edits were made). Somewhat surprisingly, among the
worst offenders were Wikipedia's administrators. It was not long before
all of our additions were deleted, and the article is now almost back where
it started, but at least the killing of three invading “pioneers” by the Indians
is no longer on the list as a “massacre” (although as few as five whites killed
by Indians still qualifies as a massacre on that list).

Here
is our list of omitted massacres, posted to the Wikipedia massacre article.
All of them have been removed, and there has been a recent effort to remove the
massacre list altogether. Some were moved to an
Indian Massacre list, but the list itself
originally began with Euro-American apologetics (calling Indian slaughters of
the invaders “atrocities” and the white slaughter of Indians “retaliations"
- in fact, the opposite was true the vast majority of the time - as of March 2009,
that biased introduction was revised, for more evidence that there may be some
hope for Wikipedia - however, it was changed back to the jingoist version by September
2009, and Indian killings of as few as two people have become a "massacre"
on that list).However, the
really big ones, all perpetrated by the Spanish during the first century of conquest,
have been completely removed from the massacre lists, except for the last two,
which occurred on North American soil.Somehow,
Indian massacres south of the
United States do not count.

The governor of Hispaniola, Nicolas de Ovando,
led expedition to “improve relations” with remaining unconquered natives of island
and, in a surprise attack on their hosts, they slaughtered 300 leaders of southwestern
Hispaniola.

Las
Casas, B. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, p. 22.

On
way to Tenochtitlán, Cortes’ invasion encounters Tlaxcala, who fiercely resist
the Spaniards. After burning ten towns and slaughtering thousands of non-combatants
(a tactic unknown to Mesoamerica) the Tlaxcalans surrender and become Cortes’
most significant ally against the Aztecs.

After defeating resisting Timucuan warriors, Hernando
de Soto had two hundred of them executed, in the first large-scale massacre by
Europeans on what became American soil.

Duncan, E., Hernando de Soto, pp. 286-291.

1540-1541

Tiguex Massacres

c. 250

Tiguex, New Mexico

After the invading Spaniards seized
the houses, food and clothing of the Tiguex, and raped their women, the Tiguex
resisted, which led to a Spanish attack that burned fifty people at the stake
who had surrendered. Francisco Vázquez de Coronado's men then laid siege
to the Moho Pueblo, and after a months-long siege, they slaughtered two hundred
fleeing warriors.

Hired by the Dutch, John Underhill reproduced successful
Fort Mystic strategy of burning sleeping village and slaughtering the survivors.

Steele, I., Warpaths, p. 116.

1865-1871

Yahi Massacres

c. 200

Northern California

Several massacres of native encampments by American
settlers exterminated the Yahi tribe, such as the first in 1865 (74 killed), the
1866 Three Knolls (40 killed) and Dry Camp (33 killed) massacres, ending with
the Kingsley Cave/Morgan Camp massacre (30 killed) in 1871. The Yahi were Ishi’s
tribe.

Cook,
S., The Conflict between the California Indian and White Civilization.

Led by ex-Tucson mayor, William Oury, vigilante
band from Tucson slaughtered Apache women and children while men were doing their
spring planting.

Terrell,
J., Land Grab, pp. 4-10.

Conclusion

This
situation of Wikipedia’s bias in favor of the exterminators, while the exterminated
receive passing mention, if at all, is typical in the West. Today’s genocide in Iraq, to seize control over the world’s
hydrocarbon deposits, is another typical instance of the West’s murderous, collective
egocentrism. Lies of omission are most commonly used in the service
of propaganda, not lies of commission, and this instance of Wikipedia's heavily
biased massacre list is standard operating procedure. Many criticisms have
been published regarding Wikipedia recently. One of its founders even began
another web-based effort, where he has chosen "truth over democracy." My
friend who helped me add to that massacre list had a series of dismaying episodes
with Wikipedia, the massacre censorship being one of many incidents that pointed
to Wikipedia's shortcomings, and that goes for all the languages that it is presented
in. My friend has far more to say than I do about Wikipedia's flaws, but
my experience with that massacre list showed me how far Wikipedia has to go before
it becomes a truly relevant and useful informational resource on the Internet.
It can be appallingly poor when dealing with fringe science and other controversial
topics (free energy suppression
and Gaston Naessens’s discoveries,
for instance). Whether it can overcome its obvious failings (which are largely
due to the human condition these days) is an open question for me.